


space men from planet omega (the colorblind remix)

by suitablyskippy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life, warning for really screwed up parent/child relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 09:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitablyskippy/pseuds/suitablyskippy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>you cant</i>, and your breathing steadies, <i>you cant do that to me</i></p><p>
  <i>im your mom little gill </i>
  <br/>
  <i>i can do whatever the shell i want with you</i>
</p><p> </p><p>A fish alien from outer space and the kids who hate her; a fish alien from outer space and the kids she wishes she hated more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azzandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/gifts).
  * Inspired by [blue and green, green and blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/466643) by [Azzandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra). 



John palms the nickel and flips the card and lays it down beside the others, spread out in a crooked fan across his piece of sky blue felt. You can see the notch cut from the card’s corner (and the little loop of thread trailing from his sleeve, with the paper bouquet tied to the other end, and the red dot inked on the back of the queen of hearts, and the coin-sized pocket stitched clumsily to his cuff), but the room is stuffy and the air is still, and it weighs down heavy enough to crush you into utter lethargy. now tell me, madam, says John, was this – oh crap, hang on, it’s here somewhere – was THIS your card? 

You roll your head towards it. nope! 

what, for real? no kidding? 

for real!!! You drop your head back down onto one of the armchair’s arms. Your legs are slung over the other: the pleated red skirt you’re not allowed out your bedroom without is rucked carelessly up above your knees, and your feet are bare and muddy from trampling early crocuses in the vast and beautiful front yard earlier. If you tilt your head just the right way you can feel the longest tangles of your hair brush the parquet. You haven’t felt so listless since the last time your windows were padlocked to stop you climbing out. pranks are your thing john, ive got ALL sorts of better stuff to be getting on with ;) 

wow yes, that is definitely the case! i am suddenly totally convinced by your story, even though i have heard you cry yourself to sleep because you know you will never pull a prank like i can. He claps one hand to his heart, right where the little red spoon logo is stitched onto his shirt, and rolls his eyes theatrically upwards. good job, jade, i have never been so – but it’s one sarcastic flourish too many, and the nickel tucked between his palm and the pad of his thumb slips free, and bounces onto the table, and rolls across the varnish and rattles and rattles round its axis till it slows and settles, and topples down flat. 

lol, you say. 

that is such bullshit, says John. 

big words for such a lil shrimp, says your mother. 

You jolt upright and John jerks backward, and you smear mud across the armchair as you drag your feet off it and he shoves his piece of felt with its fanned-out card deck hard to the side and it slides straight across the table. In the doorway, backlit by the warm hall lights, your mother cuts a sleek silhouette. 

i didn’t mean to, John starts, and stops and tries again: what i mean is i did not say what you think i said, or, uh, what you probably think i said? because what i actually said was. um. it was. bull. ball. 

Tap-a-tap-tap: her lacquered yellow nails on the door’s carved panels. The last playing cards float down with no breeze to lift them. 

ball. baaall... pit. ballpit. 

buoy, she says, i aint got beef with your dirty mouth. tuna can it 

awesome, he says, in relief, and hunkers down in the shadows beside the table to scoop his cards back up. You look at the back of his head. It is dark and neatly-combed. 

and you gill: upstairs   
ima brush every tangle out that hair a yours  
looks like a hurricane hit a kelp garden god DAMN

Your fingers dent the armchair’s dark rose upholstery and small dust clouds puff out when you grip tighter. no, you say. 

you reelly wanna make me come over there and fetch you

im not doing anything you say you bitch!!! 

beach, suggests John, helpfully, and he ducks beneath the table to retrieve some errant cards from the floorboard cracks they’ve lodged between. Wide tracks cut through the dust behind him. 

cmon lil fishbait   
you fucked with ma flower borders   
its offishally fair i get to fuck with you back

um since when has anything youve ever done in your whole life been FAIR????? 

And then your skull is shattering – or it’s not, but – a sound so loud and high there’s space for nothing in your head except it, shrilling from one side to another and reverberating down every passage in your brain – you double up and grab to get your glasses off, your Crocker-brand glasses, and the dark room is swimming in salt tears and 

and silence. You gasp for breath like it’s a seizure. 

quit questionin your elders and betas, says your mother, coolly. lets shake a fin and get upstairs

you cant, and your breathing steadies, you cant do that to me

im your mom little gill  
i can do whatever the shell i want with you

Slowly, you slide your glasses back on: no sound. In the high corners great wispy drapes of cobwebs hang, perfectly still in the airless room. 

jade, says John, and he sits back on his heels. The knees of his red pants are grey with dust and his hands, when he shrugs towards you, are dusted grey in the creases. you’re making kind of a big deal out of this. 

i hate you, you tell your mother. 

you heard the bouy, she says.


	2. Chapter 2

I say jane. Jane? 

Jake’s whisper is his normal voice with a rasp added. You roll under your covers and huff out a long groan, because if you’re to be roused from sleep you’ll make darn sure you do it with bad grace. 

Jane? Wait hang on are you snatching some shuteye or not i cant tell. Uhh just a sec. You hear the soft fast patting that’s him fumbling across the bedside table for his glasses, and the Ha! of satisfaction when he has them, and then blankets shift and his bed creaks, and you crack your eyes a little way open. Janey? 

Moonlight dapples across the bedspread; its patterns play and change as a breeze stirs the curtains and your brother’s a dark blur hunched up against them. _Must_ we keep the windows open?  you whisper, and you reach out for your own glasses, which are folded neatly beside your lamp, precisely where you left them and precisely where you always leave them. You slip them on and the room comes into focus: high shadowy corners, the elaborate iron scrolls of the grill before the cold and empty fireplace, the glass-fronted cabinet your boardgames are kept shelved in, unlocked when it’s decided you deserve it. 

Indeed we must! says Jake. Maximum proximity to the outdoors at all times thats what i say. 

You push your glasses up to rub at your bleary eyes. The room is still and shadowed, and your feet are numb from cold. 

It fosters a hearty sense of potential unbounded, Jake tells you, and then he tugs at his collar in a gesture of discomfort you’re almost positive he picked up off Tony Curtis at the picturehouse in town last week. Which is um. Which is sort of the exact nature of the inquiry ive got for you as it happens.......

Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jake, you say, frustrated, and he laughs at the rhyme. You wrap your blankets in tight around your shoulders and push yourself up: perched cross-legged on the edge of your bed you lean towards him, a soft shivery breeze ruffling the tufts of your hair. Is this about your getaway plans again? Because if it is, mister, you can stop right there. I’ve got _more_ than enough on my plate right now without signing up to another of your harebrained schemes! 

You know all that stuff youre always saying about mother? he says, and you fall abruptly quiet. Moonlight gleams on his scuffed-up specs. Because ive been entertaining a couple of ideas lately. Sort of giving them a good going over if you know what i mean and the long and short of it is i think i may just be onto something. 

Would you mind cutting to the chase? you say, and your voice is taut and awkward. I’m sure you know just how partial I am to the topic of our mother. 

Jake heaves a breath so deep the rusty springs of his bed squeal below him. Have you ever considered she might be of extraterrestrial origin??? 

It’s so ridiculously, absurdly far from everything you were expecting – _You know how shes evil and all that well what if shes a JAMES BOND CRIMINAL MASTERMIND?? Hey jane what if mothers raising us to follow in her august bank robbing footsteps??? Whoa what would you do if one day we returned from say a brief jolly round the lake and mother was conducting an illegal bear fighting ring in the first floor drawing room????_ – and you don’t know what to say, so you say:  Jake, and he falls forward across his bed with his weight on the heels of his hands in his hurry to cut you off. 

Just hear me out a minute!!!!! Please? Just a minute? 

You can hear a rapid heartbeat and it wouldn’t seem strange to you if it was his. All right, you say, stiffly. It’s probably better you get this nonsense out your system, after all. 

Okay well first things first its established fact aliens can take human form if a sitch so demands, also everyone knows its like a *thing* that aliens always want to investigate society and sort of wangle their way in with the local populace. And mothers wangled in pretty fucking tight if i say so myself which i totally do, shes an incontrovertible pillar of the international community and WHO BETTER to prep the way for invading alien hordes than an incontrovertible pillar of the international community??? 

Did you by any chance pinch that line about international pillars from her last press release? 

Hehe you got me. Ive been doing my research! 

You’re an awfully silly boy, you say, feeling brittle, and he winks. 

But – and then he ducks his head and looks up at you, and you suspect he intends it to come across beseeching but the shadows, and the flutter of the curtains, and the single pale slice of moonlight reflecting from his glasses make him eerie in the dark. But janey what other explanation provides even HALF as comprehensive a set of answers?? 

I can think of several, you say, several! you say again. From right off the top of my head! And in NOT A SINGLE ONE is Mother an alien!! 

Well what even IS she then!!! Riddle me THAT. 

She’s simply a terrible mother, you say, and for once Jake falls silent. Come _on_! – if we hadn’t seen that picture last week with the outer-space robot whatsits in it you wouldn’t have any notions of the sort, Jake, and you know it! 

He rubs his hand up the side of his head in a way that makes you want to sit him on the floor between your knees and brush his hair till all the agitated ruffles lie down flat. Space men from planet omega, he says. 

I beg your pardon? 

Space men from planet omega that was the flicks title. 

I’m sure it was, you say, uncomfortably. 

Little grey space dudes, he says, and you’re starting to feel like maybe this whole entire time you’ve been keeping everything you feel about your mother tamped down neat and efficient and out of sight in a tight-sealed pot, and Jake has just come along and peeled off the lid and shoved the pot in the stove and turned the heat way up and stepped back to watch it rise or perhaps explode. Little grey space dudes....... LIKE MOTHER. 

Oh, Jake – you don’t want to snap at him, but it’s not like he doesn’t know you’ve a temper, and it’s not like he’s not been deliberately tweaking every one of your dials for the last half an hour, and it’s not like he’s unaware there are lines a person just does not cross! And you _do_ snap at him, voice hushed and vicious in your darkened bedroom, and he shrinks back from you across his bed.  I’ve had it just about up to here with your crackpot theories! If you say she’s this – this grand intergalactic _traveller_ then you’re just making excuses for her, when if you were just to be honest with yourself you’d realise that you can be an awful, wicked, cruel person without being a spaceman! 

Wait jane all im saying

You can be a spiteful WITCH of a person without being a spaceman!! 

Janey hang on a minute im just

You can be unkind and deceitful and a terrible mother and you can do all that without ever being a spaceman, Jake, you can do all that and be an ordinary human being EXACTLY LIKE US!!! 

He takes off his glasses and they clatter when he drops them on the bedside table. Then he lies back down and shifts around below his blankets for a while, getting comfy, and when he’s laid out face down and you’ve got your heartbeat pounding at a less frantic pace and you feel your cheeks have probably lost their flush, he says – mumbles, into his pillow: Its a plausible interpretation of the facts jane thats all i was getting at. 

I disagree, you say.


	3. Chapter 3

you’re not very fair on mom, says John, one night, and you curl your hands into fists at the edges of your duvet and glower up into the dark. 

she is LITERALLY A MONSTER, you say. 

don’t get mad at me, he says, but is this about her not letting bec sleep on your bed? 

You’ve shared this room for years; you know the meaning of every sound he makes. There’s a creak, and the soft shifting of heavy wool blankets, and you know he’s rolled onto his side. cos like, i totally get why you’re angry about it? but also that’s kind of a crappy reason to treat her like you do. 

shes a monster, you say again. 

she’s your _mom_ , says John. 

You roll over and press your face into your pillow, and it smells sanitary and feels hard, and you slow down your breathing till your chest rises and falls at a rhythm slow enough John heaves a tremendous, melodramatic sigh and stops hissing your name across the room. One night you took his glasses off the bedside table while he slept and broke them apart – a butter knife you snuck from the kitchen used as a screwdriver, hair grips you’d rather cut off all your hair than wear used as tiny tweezers, kneeling up at the windowsill for the moonlight’s weak illumination – but even once the technology inside had been dissected and removed and laid out in orderly rows on the glossed and varnished windowsill for your closer inspection: even then, you had no clue what you were looking at. A rubbery yellow wire you’d teased out from round the right hand lens was pulsing, arrhythmically; the two miniscule screws that held the nose pads on glowed a rich kind of purple; and if you leaned close, and held your breath, you could hear the whole array of parts emitting a dull whine on one high monotonous note, so quiet and so persistent you started to fumble your investigation, dropped hair grips and lost the butter knife in your blankets, sent screws rattling and rolling away across the windowsill. 

When you can’t sleep, that’s what you think about: the weird living machinery inside John’s glasses, like nothing you’ve ever seen diagrammed in any electronics textbook you’ve brought home from the town library. And when you are sleeping, you dream about it too, and then you wake up and all over again you can’t sleep, and you think about it: the weird living machinery inside John’s glasses, like nothing you’ve ever seen on Earth. 

 

\---

 

It’s one slow afternoon when the sun angles down pale and low through the kitchen windows, gleaming bright white on the marble countertops, and your mother says no gill you dont know shit – you gotta do it like _this_

Her grip on your wrists is strong and so cold you shudder, your back against her chest, her arms folded round the front of you, her gleaming bangles clinking against the cool countertop as she takes your hands and curls them round the rolling pin. like this, lil fishbait. you gotta get a good tight grip fore you start squashin shit up

I’m perfectly capable of managing this alone, you say, and add, for effect: But thank you _very_ much. 

that a fact? 

It’s a certainty. 

The air in the kitchen is very cool; the high window above the sink is open and, periodically, the screen door slams and slams again in the breeze. Your mother lets go of your wrists. You turn round as she steps back and even though you’re standing on your wooden kitchen stool – high enough to let you rest your elbows comfortably on the counter while you dig the whisk to the heart of a mixture, high enough to let your mother hold your wrists from behind, high enough to let you see the back garden rolling sweet and green away towards the blossoming trees that fence it in the distance – even though you’re there, on your stool, she’s taller than you. Her hair curls heavy and dark and wild down about her nipped-in waist, so you keep yours cut short. 

go it alone then, she says, if you think you can   
cmon kiddo   
lets sea you try doin ANYFIN without me

Sometimes you have daydreams, and sometimes in the daydreams she’s a foot taller than she is, with horns coloured like autumn leaves that curve right up and scrape the highest ceilings in the house; but you like facts cold and hard and there before you, and you’ve never paid much attention to daydreams. 


End file.
